video chat

Usually, Google bundles up new features in big app updates that you can sideload, but it's increasingly common for new features to just show up after a server-side switch gets flipped. That's the case today with Duo. The way you select contacts is different, and you can do different things with them.

The festival of spring and color, Holi, is quite a cheerful celebration in India and Nepal, which is now spreading to more and more countries. Google likes to honor these occasions in various ways, and we knew this year's Holi would bring video effects in Duo. They're now live, though they may be geolimited. Update: They're available in India only.

An update to Google's Duo app began rolling out earlier today, and unlike many other recent app updates, there's actually a brand new feature that doesn't appear to be locked behind a server-side switch. Unfortunately, it also appears that it may not be working properly, and might have been left enabled by accident. Duo is also preparing a special video effect in honor of Valentine's Day.

Back in May of 2016, Google announced two new messaging apps: Allo and Duo. The former, as you probably know, is being killed off in about three months. Duo, however, is still alive and kicking, as it's a pretty good video calling app. It just hit a whopping one billion downloads on the Play Store, which is no small feat.

Now that we're deep into the holiday season, plenty of people will be talking with their families, even if they can't necessarily travel long distances to reunite in person. Video calls will be skyrocketing for the next few weeks, and for many people, that will be happening with Google Duo. The latest update to v44 is now out, and while it doesn't appear to bring any new features immediately upon installation, there are a few things spotted in a teardown that will be pretty useful when they do come to life.

A new version of Duo is making the rounds with some interesting changes both on the surface and behind the scenes. There are some visual tweaks that bring a slightly updated look to Duo, and an option was removed from settings. Sadly, it looks like screen sharing may be dead for the foreseeable future. And if you're interested in scoring some rewards in trade for signing friends up to Duo, you'll have something to look forward to.

A new version of Google Duo is began rolling out earlier today. It doesn't look like any new features have gone live with this update, nor does it appear to restore the screen sharing feature that was briefly enabled a couple months ago. However, there are some new things to look forward to in the future, including what is likely a pause button for video chats and a reward system for inviting friends to use Duo.

An update to the Duo app is making its way out, but this appears to be a small-ish service update, at least for now. There's no specific sign that this version will re-launch the screen sharing feature after it rolled out in a malfunctioning state with v34, but it's possible that the implementation has been fixed and the feature will be turned on later. Instead, this update marks the end of Jelly Bean support. A teardown also shows that official tablet support is almost here.

Facebook's F8 developer conference is underway in San Jose right now, and that means lots of new announcements about many of the company's products. It's funny to think the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012 was actually met with huge skepticism. The photo sharing app seems to have gone from strength to strength and has come out of the recent Facebook scandals largely unscathed.

Yesterday, Instagram announced a host of new features designed to help users share, connect, and discover. The most notable of the new additions is probably video chat. Live video on Instagram is already immensely popular, but now it will be possible to have a similar experience among a smaller group of friends.